Planet Ubuntu Women

Akkana Peck: Disabling mouse/keyboard wakeup

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:21:00 +0000

Suspend (sleep) works very well on the dual-Atom desktop. The only problem with it is that the mouse or keyboard wake it up. I don't mind the keyboard, but the mouse is quite sensitive, so a breeze through the window or a big truck driving by on the street can jiggle the mouse and wake the machine when I'm away.

I've been through all the BIOS screens looking for a setting to flip, but there's nothing there. Some web searching told me that under Windows, there's a setting you can change that will affect this, but I couldn't find anything similar for Linux, until finally drc clued me in to /proc/acpi/wakeup.

cat /proc/acpi/wakeup

will tell you all the events that can cause your machine to wake up from various sleep states.

Unfortunately, they're also obscurely coded. Here are mine:

Device  S-state   Status   Sysfs node
SLPB      S4    *enabled  
P32       S4     disabled  pci:0000:00:1e.0
UAR1      S4     enabled   pnp:00:0a
PEX0      S4     disabled  pci:0000:00:1c.0
PEX1      S4     disabled  
PEX2      S4     disabled  pci:0000:00:1c.2
PEX3      S4     disabled  pci:0000:00:1c.3
PEX4      S4     disabled  
PEX5      S4     disabled  
UHC1      S3     disabled  pci:0000:00:1d.0
UHC2      S3     disabled  pci:0000:00:1d.1
UHC3      S3     disabled  pci:0000:00:1d.2
UHC4      S3     disabled  pci:0000:00:1d.3
EHCI      S3     disabled  pci:0000:00:1d.7
AC9M      S4     disabled  
AZAL      S4     disabled  pci:0000:00:1b.0

What do all those symbols mean? I have no clue. Apparently the codes come from the BIOS's DSDT code, and since it varies from board to board, nobody has published tables of likely translations.

The only two wakeups that were enabled for me were SLPB and UAR1. SLPB apparently stands for SLeeP Button, and Rik suggested UAR probably stood for Universal Asynchronous Receiver (the more familiar term UART both receives and Transmits.) Some of the other devices in the list can possibly be identified by comparing their pci: codes against lspci, but not those two.

Time for some experimentation. You can toggle any of these by writing to the wakeup device:

echo UAR1 >/proc/acpi/wakeup

It turned out that to disable mouse and keyboard wakeup, I had to disable both SLPB and UAR1. With both disabled, the machine wakes up when I press the power button. (What the SLeeP Button is, if it's not the power button, I don't know.)

My mouse and keyboard are PS/2. For a USB mouse and keyboard, look for something like USB0, UHC0, USB1.

The UAR1 setting is remembered even across boots: there's no need to do anything to make sure the setting is remembered. But the SLPB setting resets every time I boot. So I edited /etc/rc.local and added this line:

echo SLPB >/proc/acpi/wakeup

Nightrose: Berlin, we’ll meet again

Lydia — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:26:27 +0000

As others on PlanetKDE already wrote we had a really great time in Berlin last week. The KDE/Kubuntu/Amarok booth was well staffed with my favorite gearheads and new KDE people now to be added to the former group It was nice to meet you folks! One of the best things about this year’s Linuxtag: We finally managed to get our booths (KDE, Kubuntu, Amarok, QtSoftware and KDAB) together as close as possible No more running from one side of the exhibition to the other like in previous years \o/

Thursday was probably the busiest day for me. Ingo interviewed me about Amarok for RadioTux. (Excellent job as always, Ingo! ;-)) The recording of it is available at RadioTux. Shortly after that I had to rush off to join Alexandra in giving an introduction to community management in free software projects in our “Community Management 101″ workshop that was well received.
The other days were filled with meetings and lots of talking to visitors and other projects. It is nice to see the shift in attitude towards KDE 4 compared to Linuxtag last year. A lot of people came to our booth to let us know they use and like KDE 4 now. This really rocks! Those who were not happy with KDE 4 yet mostly had very minor problems which we fixed in a few minutes; like showing them how to add applets to their taskbar or what the places bar in Dolphin is capable of. Oh and I was surprised how many people first didn’t believe I was running a stock KDE 4.2.4 on Kubuntu on my 7′ EeePC. So once again: The tiny thing does indeed run KDE 4 Special thanks for that to the Plasma and KWin team. Plasma and KWin on the EeePC are quite an eye catcher at events like Linuxtag.

Kreuzberg surprised a small group of us on Saturday with CSD. Definitely not what I would have expected for that evening but it was awesome! And let me tell you: Marge’s outfit was great but it wasn’t the best one by far. That one goes to someone dressed as Hellboy shouting “KDE! Awesome!” after seeing Frederik’s KDE shirt. This was my second time in Kreuzberg and the second time there was a party on the streets. Rock! (Way less police than on May 1st though ;-))
Sunday and Monday Frank, Cornelius, Thorsten, Danimo, Dominik, Milian and I met at the QtSoftware office to talk about the future of KDE’s wikis. It was quite productive and results will be visible soon.

Thanks go to KDE e.V. and Amarok for funding and of course the Linuxtag team for another great event.

Oh and btw: I of course signed the FLA as well. (I think I got number 10 - nice round number.)

Everyone going to Gran Canaria: Have a nice time and lots of fun and make sure to blog/dent/tweet a lot for those left behind at home. I want to see lots of photos

Ara Pulido: I am going to Gran Canaria Desktop Summit

Ara Pulido — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:31:56 +0000

Everybody is blogging about it, so do I. Tomorrow I will be travelling to Gran Canaria to attend the Desktop Summit. If you're interested in testing, I will be presenting Mago on Wednesday. I hope to see you there and meet a lot of new people!

Catherine Devlin: PyOhio registration, schedule, sponsors...

Catherine (sam18xgy4fz@liquidid.net) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:09:28 +0000

Things are really coming together!

PyOhio registration is open. 38 people have signed up in just over a day!
The talk schedule is up. 25 talks, my goodness.
Oracle Technology Network and Intellovations have stepped forward as sponsors.
Oracle is also sending Todd Trichler to cooperate with me on a two-hour tutorial on Oracle/Python/Linux. I'm enjoying the preparations so far - I think you'll like it if you have any interest in databases.

Elizabeth Krumbach: Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Chipotle and Gelato

pleia2 — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 04:01:59 +0000

Following my Saturday trip up to NYC, I spent Sunday with Stephen down at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. We spent all their open hours there, from 1-5PM, and what a great little museum! I never even knew it was there!

Sadly after charging my camera after my NYC trip, I completely forgot the battery in the charger when I went down to Philly, I spent the entire museum visit with just the camera on my g1. I’m not the biggest fan of using cellphone for cameras, but the g1 didn’t do so bad! I actually shrunk all the full-size photos in this entry a bit.

Skeleton in Ancient Egyptian exhibit

An ancient Greek on a laptop ;D

Necklace from the Painted Metaphors Exhibit

At 5 we were shooed out of the museum and drove over to the new Chipotle in University City for dinner. Earlier in the day I had twittered about being downtown and my friend DarKrow dropped me a tweet to meet up, so he joined us for dinner. After dinner he introduced us to the best gelato I’ve ever had at a chain called Capogiro Gelato. I ended up with a cone of their Tiramisu and Chocolate Banana. Following that I headed home.

This weekend I’m heading out to San Francisco for a long weekend visit with MJ. I’m flying out Thursday evening and taking a redeye home Sunday night/Monday morning. Plans? Sushi! 4th of July celebrations! Snuggles! Samurai (…in a museum)! OK, maybe won’t get to everything, but it should be a fun weekend :)

Kadambari Devarajan: Cycle Jackie Chan...

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:23:53 +0000

It's a thriller coz he is dangerous for me and I beat it when he's around, bad guy that he is else there'll be blood on the dance floor which is unfotunately not dirty Diana's. Who is it that spilled the blood then? Heal the world even though all I wanna say is that they don't really care about us.Things are now just black and white...

* Although his name rhymes with the title, I've somehow found an uncanny association between Michael Jackson and Bruce Lee. His death just reaffirms it!
* He might be most famous for his music and gyrations but what really impressed me is his patent on Antigravity shoes! Seems so reverently Kramer-ish!
* Some trivia - his autobiography was apparently code named "Neil Armstrong", for obvious moonwalking reasons.
* Some references close home - (a) there was a music store near my house (in Madras) that was called "Moon Walk" that had a really catchy and interesting decor... They unfortunately closed it down a few years ago but their "Man on the Moon" work, visible at all times over the front shutter (there has to be a name for this!,) is still vividly memorable. (b) Surya's gyrations to the song "Yethi Yethi..." from the film "Vaaranam Aayiram", a tribute to MJ from Gautham Menon (c) Reality tv show on Prabhu Deva, who used to famously rip of MJ, and was his initial claim to fame before he stopped imitating and started displaying his actual genius in performances/choreography... I saw an episode of this because I underwent exactly ONE dance lesson (in Lambada) from one of the contestants!
* The first songs I heard by MJ and my favorites as a kid (under 10-er) were "Heal the World" and "All I Wanna Say is That", more for the lyrics than the music. Obviously.
* I, initially, heard more of MJ only because of Macaulay Culkin, who I think was a reincarnation of Winnie-the-Pooh for his "cuteness factor" alone, and the frequent mentions of "Neverland".
* Personally, I don't think someone with all the quirks mentioned above and who thought of himself as "Peter Pan" can molest anyone!

Kadambari Devarajan: Even Parallel Lines Meet at Infinity...

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 18:47:19 +0000

(Pardon the meter, and this terrible excuse for a poem. A literary disgrace, it might be, but 'tis necessary for me!)

Distance makes the heart grow fonder, they say
Many a time that might be true,
But sometimes, miles and miles away
Is simply just not right, I rue.

Happy, I should be, with life working out,
But why is being alone tearing me apart?
Why this hurt, this pain? I shout.
Handling all this with a smile is an art!

So used to staying in constant touch,
So used to sharing every smile, every tear.
Forced separation tears me too much,
I'm muddled,confused, and nothing's clear.

It should not be so painful or difficult.
Why is handling my emotions so hard?
The feelings are mutual and shared, but
Circumstance is making me the sad bard!

It has only been few months or less,
But what about the months to go?
When will these lines meet, not digress?
Such agony, such terrible woe!

A lament on communication, the lack of it?
When mobiles phones and internets abound?
Hoping is something I can do, and I can long wait,
But will this satellite start going around?

Narrowmindedness is to me a thorn,
Please break the dogmas and the rituals,
Stop the Old Indian/s with the horn!
Let me/us be. Banish the rules!

I know this separation ain't for long,
You can't stand it either, I know!
Missing you a lot, and hence this song
Just verse, wordifying my sorrow...

Amber Graner: Atlanta Linux Fest and Ubuntu Global Jam...

Just Me, Amber! (akgraner@gmail.com) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:54:50 +0000

The Atlanta Linux Fest is going to be held on September 19, 2009 in Atlanta, GA! I am so excited to be attending but more important to me is I get to be part of the planning. All the behind the scenes stuff is awesome, and the folks that I am getting to work with from the Ubuntu GA LoCo are amazing! Wanna be part of the fun, them Click here to contact the organizers and let them know what you are thinking. Thanks in Advance and can't wait to see you there.

I'm also part of the Ubuntu NC LoCo and we are in the planning stages of meet-n-greets in 4 areas of the State, Charlotte, Winston-Salem, Asheville, and Raleigh prior to the Ubuntu Global Jam. The goal is to get people talking face to face, but some faces and names the the IRC nicks and mailing list address, and see who is excited about what areas of Ubuntu. As the weekend of October 2-4, 2009 will be all things Ubuntu.:-) So if you are in NC and want to join in on the fun take a look at the Ubuntu NC LoCo Wiki, join the mailing list, forum discussions, or pop in IRC and say, "hi!" The more the merrier. :-)

All our stuff is in the house, and all but about 50 boxes are unpacked. Still haven't found all my clothes or half my shoes but all my kitchen stuff is available so meals can be cooked. All the furniture is at least in all the right rooms and the computers and TV's are working. All a plus in my book. Now it's on to picking out and hanging the window treatments, figuring out what paintings and art work go on what walls, etc... However, being back at home is a great feeling.

Now if I could just get back into my routine it would be sweet..in time, I know all in good time! Hope you all are having a great day more later... :-)

Augustina Blair: Defcon 17 Schedule Posted (+overview of Defcon 16)

missaugustina — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 21:59:00 +0000

I’m not really a “hacker” in the network security sense, nor am I really into network security. I went to Defcon last year because a coworker who was planning to attend convinced me I would have fun. I have other friends who attended in the past and enjoyed it. I mentioned it to a few [...]

Melissa Draper: The Ubuntu IRC Ecosphere

melissa — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 10:18:03 +0000

IRC is an incredibly important part of the Ubuntu ecosphere. The Ubuntu channels are kindly hosted by the freenode network, and are used as a communications platform for both support and development purposes.

However, there’s been a few things lately that makes me think that the same people who rely on Ubuntu’s IRC channels on a daily basis do not necessarily understand the processes that have been put in place to keep the namespace functional. Now, while this is a good thing as it means they currently don’t have to worry about this sort of stuff, knowing the lay of the land is useful for when you need to find your way around it.

The IRC Team

The IRC Team are the IRC Operators (we’re not called “moderators”!) who manage the day-to-day affairs of the main ubuntu channels (such as #ubuntu{+1,-offtopic,-motu,-devel}, #kubuntu{-offtopic,-devel}, etc), and can be found in #ubuntu-ops and #ubuntu-irc.

#ubuntu-ops is for the discussion of operators, rules, bans and so forth that occur in the main ubuntu channels.

#ubuntu-irc is for other IRC enquiries including assistance for team channels. LoCo Teams especially are invited to use this channel for discussing bans and so forth, including mediation with the banned person. The IRC Team does not usually intervene in LoCo channel affairs (but exceptions have been made in the past only when absolutely necessary).

The IRC Council

The IRC Council is a small group who have been chosen by the Community Council and delegated to the task of governing the channels and IRC Team. The IRC Council can be found in #ubuntu-ops.

The IRC Council occasionally holds meetings, and in fact, there will be one this Friday 3rd July at 2100UTC in #ubuntu-meeting.

Rules and the Processes of appeals

The Ubuntu IRC channels are supposed to be a nice place to be. To achieve this, we have some rules which are called the IRC Guidelines. These rules have IRC specific things such as the use of scripts/bots, away messages, etc. The first guideline of course is “The Code of Conduct should always be obeyed.”

The process of appeals is what seems to be most lacking in the knowledge of how the IRC Ecosphere works.

Its wiki page explains it in full, but basically it goes like this:

1. If you disagree with a decision by an Operator, try discuss it politely (keeping the IRC Guidelines and Code of Conduct in mind). Do not evade bans, as this is against the rules of the freenode network.

2. If you wish to contest the decision of the individual Operator, visit #ubuntu-ops and discuss the issue.

3. If that doesn’t help either, contact the IRC Council, preferably via the mailing list.

4. If you feel that you have been mistreated by the IRC Council, contact the Community Council.

Please follow these steps in order. Going straight to the top is bad form (and not to mention impolite) and will not give you any advantage.

Summary

IRC Rocks.

Ubuntu’s IRC channels are managed by the The IRC Team and IRC Council

We have Guidelines and an Appeals process.

IRC Council will be meeting Friday 3rd July at 2100UTC in #ubuntu-meeting

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Akkana Peck: A Beginner's Guide to Free Software Programming Languages

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 20:00:00 +0000

Linux Planet asked me for an intro article for prospective programmers, explaining the pros and cons of various programming languages. Here it is: A Beginner's Guide to Free Software Programming Languages

Elizabeth Krumbach: Sunny NYC

pleia2 — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 14:30:04 +0000

Yesterday I left home around 9AM to head over to New Jersey to meet up with my friend Mike who I was traveling up to New York City with. Plans to head up there came together when I learned my friend Wilmer of the Bitlbee project was going to be up there. Then learned via twitter that Nikkiana would also be in town! Mike was headed up for different reasons anyway so going together seemed to make sense.

The work Mike was doing in the city required use of his car, so for the only the second time in my life I got to ride a car into NYC (the last time was with my grand parents, YEARS ago, even they normally took the train). This was the first time I’d ever been through the Lincoln Tunnel, and was delighted to learn that I still had cellphone reception there, so I twittered from under a river! We parked on 7th Ave, touched base with our respective friends and then headed to Burgers & Cupcakes for lunch. On the way down 7th we saw this smashed car, yikes!

Burgers & Cupcakes was awesome. We had planned on hitting a burger joint that Mike’s friend recommended, but then learned they don’t open until 4PM. By then burgers were on our mind so Friday night we were searching for burger places to eat at. What could be better than burgers and cupcakes?

I snagged a salmon burger, which while not your typical giant-american-burger was immensely satisfying. They had a burger and milkshake special so I couldn’t help but order a chocolate shake to go along with it. And dessert? A delicious carrot cupcake.

After lunch Mike left for his engagement I had some time to kill before meeting up with Nikki and Wilmer. I wandered around 7th Ave for a bit, then got bored and headed toward 6th. To my surprise a long stretch of 6th was shut down for vendors of all sorts, and made for a lot of fun to walk through.

I met up with Nikki around 2:30 and we continued the wandering. Having known her only online until then via Ubuntu stuff it was very cool to meet up and talk in person finally. We snagged some $1 lemonades and enjoyed wandering. Around 3:30 I found Wilmer finally (grin, we were supposed to meet at 2!) and he joined us. We headed toward the Empire State Building to see about going up to the top, but the wait was a bit long so we satisfied ourselves by taking pictures of it instead. It’s a very big building.

Unfortunately Mike’s plans changed unexpectedly and caused us to have to leave the city around 4:30PM - d’oh! I think next time I’ll see about parking my car at a train station in NJ and braving the trip up myself.

In spite of the shortened trip, I am very glad I went up and was able to see people for a little while. And New York City! I quite like Manhattan, going up is always a fun adventure. Plus, now that Nikki is up there I have at least two friends in the city who I’d be comfortable calling to meet up, fun!

pleia2 and nikkiana

Wilmer and pleia2

Today the weather is beautiful yet again! And I’m going down to Philadelphia with Stephen to go to the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. I just learned it existed a few weeks ago and have been trying to find a day to go. Then I think we’ll be hitting Chipotle for dinner, yum!

Melissa Draper: Action is change.

melissa — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 16:16:50 +0000

If you were to walk up to someone on the street and ask them to name one problem — any problem – that they are aware of, it is unlikely that they would be able to stop at one.

Chances are pretty high that many of the problems they know of, you will never have heard of or come across personally.

Sadly, lack of awareness is the single largest cause of problems not being fixed.

Think of it as being like the person who always parks across your driveway. If you park down the street and wait for them to move – rather than honking the horn – they’ll never know they’re obstructing someone.

How do we raise awareness of problems that we have? Well, in the software world, we have what are known as bugs.

People report problems they have discovered by raising bugs. This horn-honking makes the problems more visible, and people who can contribute to making a difference act on these bugs.

Both reporting the bugs, and the followup by others are actions which change the world for the better and should be celebrated.

Ubuntu does this really well with it’s initiatives like Bug Jams, 5-A-Day and Hug Days.

Sadly, reporting ‘bugs’ with non-software things (like Community) is not quite so straightforward.

As there is no bug tracker for problems we see in our community, to report these “Community Bugs” we sometimes have to take action with other tools. Some of us use blogs to raise awareness of these issues. Sadly, sometimes these reports get confused for the problem itself, because they make the problem more visible.

This is a very wrong way to approach the problems being raised, and it saddens me. A lot.

Making a problem visible does not (and should not) mean it is a problem unique to us. It should never be used as a measurement of something we are doing worse than others, just because we are choosing to act while they do not. On the contrary. It means that we are better at dealing with those problems.

Blogging about problems we see in our community should be seen as a good thing, not a bad thing. Why? Because this blogging is action. The alternative is no action, and that is much worse.

Of course, having to rely on blogs to do the job of an issue tracker is not ideal. What I’d really love to see is a real way to report Community Bugs, where their visibility is something that equates a positive action.

Because action is change.

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